


I Sheet You Not

by orphan_account



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Apocalypse, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Phanfiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 14:43:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2313233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU, based off of one of their radio shows where Phil mentions a world without toilet paper.</p>
<p>"You know, when I imagined the apocalypse, I’d pictured some Godzilla-like monster destroying city by city. Or maybe something more quick like a meteor flying to Earth from space and killing everyone. Possibly a nuclear war. But no, the thing that truly brought about the end of the world… Was toilet paper."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: A bit of angst (come on, it's Dan we're talking about here. It wouldn't be a phanfic without a sprinkling of existential crisis) and really bad puns as well as some cursing but other than that, it's all clear.
> 
> Disclaimer: I am not saying that "phan" is real and I actually don't ship them. I'm simply throwing them into an alternate universe where I can control what they do and say, and they are completely unaware and thus, perfectly fine with it.

It’s been a year since the great toilet paper crisis of 2009. Society has collapsed, the bathroom is unsanitary, and people are unable to cope.   
You see, the eco-extremists were fed up with the ever-depleting number of trees in the world. They took drastic measures that no one ever saw coming- they genetically engineered a sort of “tree virus”. It would latch on to the wood, causing a chemical reaction that had a product similar to itching powder, but on a much more intense level. This product was named “Belli Scabium” (meaning War’s Itch), or BS for short. If anyone were to touch wood infected with BS, they were unable to stop scratching the spot of contact for hours; some would even scratch their skin until it bled, causing quite a few bad cases of BS to hospitalize some, and kill others.   
The toilet paper industry took the biggest hit, as their BS-infected products were the main cause of spread, making people quite literally itch their bums off. They eventually went out of business, one by one. The economy collapsed due to the sudden lack of any paper, and governments fell apart.  
The worst part is that the BS won’t stop spreading.  
It moved on from just trees in the rainforest; it was classified as an official act of bioterrorism after it spread and infected its first human. That was when people really started to flip.  
It went from being unable to touch trees to being unable to touch humans within a week after the first case. Contact with another person for any reason is now forbidden to help prevent the spread, but we all know that it doesn’t help. More and more people are dying because of the virus, and all we can do is wait for it to be our turn.  
You know, when I imagined the apocalypse, I’d pictured some Godzilla-like monster destroying city by city. Or maybe something more quick like a meteor flying to Earth from space and killing everyone. Possibly a nuclear war.  
But no, the thing that brought about the end of the world… Was toilet paper.


	2. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: A bit of angst (come on, it's Dan we're talking about here. It wouldn't be a phanfic without a sprinkling of existential crisis) and really bad puns as well as some cursing but other than that, it's all clear.
> 
> Disclaimer: I am not saying that "phan" is real and I actually don't ship them. I'm simply throwing them into an alternate universe where I can control what they do and say, and they are completely unaware and thus, perfectly fine with it.

I walked down the dirty street of Manchester, pulling my hood further over my face and scarf higher to cover my mouth. It was cold, but that wasn’t my main concern. No, the cold was the least of anyone’s problems right now. There were recent rumors of angry gangs sprouting out that were infected with BS. They’re rumored to attack people, infecting even more. I don’t understand why someone would do that seeing as it just harms everyone in the end, but then I’m not in their situation. If I was constantly itchy everywhere and could do little but wait to scratch until I bleed to death, I suppose I’d be pretty angry too.

So I tried to remain inconspicuous, stepping lightly over the bodies littering the ground. No, they weren’t dead. Well, I’m sure at least most of them were alive. Who knows these days? There wasn’t an institution set in place to clean up dead bodies so if there happened to be someone without anyone to care for them that passed away, their body would kind of just be left there. And since the economy had collapsed, most people didn’t have an actual home to live in anymore, leaving a majority of the Manchester population on the streets. Unfortunately, I was one of those people.

Then, not everyone lived on the street. Some people had enough apocalypse supplies stored up to afford a room in the mostly-empty buildings that now just served as reminders of the not-so-long-ago past. I can’t believe it’s only been a year since I was last on YouTube, watching my favorite online personalities express themselves for everyone’s entertainment.

Wow, YouTubers. Such a seemingly distant memory. I wondered what they were up to now, if they’d managed to not scratch their brains out. I miss the days where my only concerns were when Amazingphil would be uploading his new video and whether or not he’d notice my practically constant stream of comments and tweets. University seemed like such an important thing back then too. I mean, I’d occasionally over-exaggerate and say that I’d rather there be an apocalypse than be forced to choose a realistic career, but I was only joking.

Well, law seems rather unimportant now.

I looked ahead to see that I’d finally reached my destination: the food trucks. Though since a majority of food sources have been infected with BS food isn’t really even “food” anymore. To be honest, it’s just Soylent; packets of slush are rationed out to poor citizens that are forced to drink the practically flavorless stuff in order to do so much as stay alive. I’m just hoping this apocalyptic world of ours doesn’t completely follow the plot of every futuristic dystopia movie ever and make Soylent out of actual human remains.

“How many, kid?”

I jumped, startled by a voice coming from in front of me. Looking up I saw that I had reached the front of the queue and one of the city’s “government” workers was standing in front of me, dressed in a bright yellow bio-hazard uniform.

“Ohuhtwoplease” I mumbled.

“What?” She questioned, rolling his eyes at me. 

Great, even with an apocalypse I continued to fail at doing some of the most basic human things.

“I said, ‘two please’”

“Tickets?” She asked, holding out her hand. I set my own two printed-on cloth strips in her hand, and she stuffed them into the collection bag. Since paper currency was out the window, all we really had to show proof of owning anything at all is cloth. Though we will soon run out of that as well.

She then handed me two packets of the disgusting slushy drink and shouted, “next!”

I took that as my cue to leave.

Grabbing my straw, I stabbed through the bag in order to drink, slurping the flavorless mush from the aluminum packet. It actually reminded me one of those juice packets, though instead of it being a pleasurable sweet sensation hitting my tongue it was the grand-old taste of nothing.

“Welp,” I sighed between sips, “looks like I need to figure out what to do with the rest of my day.” 

You’d think that with an ever-crumbling society and the threat of a highly communicable virus looming over my head, I’d have found something to do with my life. Perhaps some people think such a situation would give them a purpose. They wouldn’t simply be another face in the crowd, getting the majority of their thrills from stories, no. They would be heroes, warriors, healers and helpers. They would stand from the rubble left by their world’s disaster and they would grow stronger, managing their own little community and keeping their friends and family safe.

I laughed at the outrageous-ness of the concept. Here, everyone’s face is the same; dirty, sad, and alone. The small letters that made up the brilliant fantasies that stories provide us with have been ignored, and the (uninfected) paper used for warmth. The heroes, warriors, helpers and healers of this time are infected the fastest; your only hope of survival is independence and solitude. There’s no recovery from the rubble, and no one has any hope of standing tall. Community in the past has just lead to more infections, and the concept of family and friends is now a sad one.

Everyone is dying, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.


	3. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my yeezus thank you for reading this! I honestly didn't expect anyone to, so this is going way beyond my expectations. :D Be sure to leave a comment!
> 
> Warnings: The existential crisis is strong in this one. Slight cursing, a slight breach in the fourth wall.
> 
> Disclaimer: I obviously don't own Dan or Phil, and I don't actually ship Phan, nor is it real.
> 
> Additionally, I do use a song in this chapter. It's The Funeral by Band of Horses, just in case you don't catch it later on. I unfortunately don't own them or the song either.

I nudged the metal fencing open, exposing myself to the terrifying sight that was the encampment of the sick underneath the bridge. As I never had enough resources to trade for housing, I was forced to choose a far less “sanitary" place to rest. I walked through the tunnel, wary of the people crowded underneath the bridge and holding my scarf closer to my mouth. Honestly, it’s like the dark ages all over again. In fact, I’m almost a hundred percent sure there’s some other plague going around. Not that it matters, really- one would sooner catch BS than they would Cholera.

I continued to march through the conglomeration of people, eventually making it to my own little corner of paradise. Well, I say paradise. The only items I can call my own are the two thin, scratchy blankets I use to make up my bed and my Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s stone book, which I’ve read too many times to count. I mean, I’d read it a lot before the BS plague but after using most of my books as fuel for fires, I’ve had no other fantasy world to escape to.

Though, neither my book nor blankets could compare to my most prized possession: my mp3 player. I remembered people making fun of me for it, always rubbing their fancy iPod touches in my face while I was stuck with own outdated audio device. Well, unfortunately for them, iPods have the battery life of a goldfish’s attention span. I however had enough foresight to save my battery when I found out that things were only going to get worse, which is surprising since I don’t do many normal things correctly. Though, because of there being no electricity I have to cherish what little battery life I have left.

I shrugged to myself, I could use a little cheering up today.

I reached into my dirty, ripped backpack, pulling out the delicate little machine that served as one of the few reminders of a better time; a time when I didn't live in constant fear of a horrible death, a time when I could taste and hear and feel and smell and touch things that didn’t remind me of pestilence, and a time when loneliness wasn’t so prominent in one’s day-to-day life with the hustle and bustle of the city.

I unwrapped the earbuds from the red, shining cylindrical metal, doing so with care so as not to harm them. The tiny speakers were honestly crap after I’d dropped it into a puddle of water one too many times, so without headphones the entire thing would be rendered useless.

Sitting down and pulling my hood from my head I turned it on, hiding the light of the screen from the view of others inside the tunnel. If anyone were to find out that I owned this, I most certainly wouldn’t own it any longer.

I took a peek at the screen.

'54% battery remaining'

Sighing, I pressed play, only glancing at the song title and artist before I hid the mp3 player in my pocket. 

' _The Funeral_ by Band of Horses,’ it read. Could be worse. To be honest, any tune would a welcoming melody to my ears, which were used to hearing only the silence of the dead and rasps of the ill.

Soon, the gentle rifts of the guitar filled my ears, and the chorus soon followed,

 

__

"I'm coming up only to hold you under

__

And coming up only to show you're wrong

__

And to know you is hard; we wonder...

__

To know you all wrong; we warn.

__

Ooooooooh Oooooooooh

__

Ooooooooh Oooooooooh

__

Really too late to call,

__

So we wait for…

__

Morning to wake you is all we got

__

To know me as hardly golden

__

Is to know me all wrong, they warn.

__

At every occasion I'll be ready for the funeral

__

At every occasion, once more, it's called the funeral

__

At every occasion, oh, I'm ready for the funeral

__

At every occasion, oh, one billion day funeral

__

I'm coming up only to show you're down for

__

And coming up only to show you're wrong.”

As the song sped up, I couldn’t help but think of the funeral that the artist was singing about. The song really wasn’t very relevant to me; there was no one in particular that I was very attached to left. Those closest to me had already come and gone, so maybe the only funeral that I could still wait for was my own.

As the final notes rung through my ears I snapped out of my contemplation and went ahead and turned off the mp3 player. If I wanted it to last, I was going to need to use it less often.

I looked around before wrapping the earbuds back up and setting it inside the smallest of my backpack pockets, making sure that there was no one watching me.

I laid down on my blankets, sighing for the tenth time that day.

“What am I supposed to do now?” I grumbled, wishing for some sort of entertainment. The sun was still out, so it obviously wasn’t dark enough for me to sleep. Besides, I’d wasted enough days in my makeshift bed, feeling sorry for myself.

I groaned as I stood up, deciding on going on yet another walk. I’d always complained about exercise requiring too much commitment and work, though I suppose nowadays it’s all I have to entertain myself with.

I pulled my hood back over my head, preparing myself to endure the chilly Manchester weather for the second time that day. I marched through the conglomeration of the ill and realized that they, too, were waiting for their own funerals.

Because the only certainty in life is death, and in this reality it’s the only safe haven left.

I became so absorbed in my own thoughts that I stopped looking at where I was walking, focusing only on the mortality of man. Well, of everything really. Can anything truly be immortal? Is time even immortal? Is time a real, physical thing or just an abstract idea created by humans to make sense of the universe? And if time is truly an imagined thing, is anything really real? Does this universe that I inhabit actually exist, or is it just some figment of my imagination? Or maybe someone else’s imagi-

My thoughts were interrupted by a rather blunt force ramming against my chest.

“Oof!” I exclaimed as the air left my lungs. The object in front of me seemed to make the same sound, and we each stumbled backwards.

I looked up to see a (slightly) taller, hooded figure. I couldn’t make out his facial features due to the shadow cast by the building we were both walking under, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t see my life flash behind my eyes.

My rather deep existential questions flew from my mind as more prominent ones emerged such as, ‘oh god, did I break anything?’ (granted, that was a rather stupid question), ‘are they mad? Are they going to kill me?’ and finally, ‘is this one of those gang members..?’

“Oh god, I’m so so sorry,” the figure apologized in a rather northern accent, stepping towards me.

Well, I’m pretty sure he isn’t a gang member.

“Are you okay? Sorry, I wasn’t looking at where I was going, I was kind of just off in my own little world…” he continued to apologize as I stood there, immobilized. Yeah, sure I contemplated death a lot, but possibility of dying right then and there was still a frightening one. I mean, I’m pretty sure angry gang members wouldn’t apologize over and over again like they actually did something wrong, but who knows? Maybe this is just his strategy to get close enough to attack.

Because he _certainly_ couldn’t have done so as soon as he bumped into me.

“…but you should still be careful, since you could get infected by someone that accidentally rubbed up against you or an awful gang member or something-”

He was still talking.

“Oh, uh…” I interrupted, shifting from foot to foot nervously after I realized this man was probably not threatening enough to make it into a gang, “S-sorry.”

“Oh, no it’s fine!” He exclaimed, his tone lightening after hearing my own apology. I relaxed a little, at the very least glad that he wasn't going to beat me up because of my shitty apology. He then reached toward his hood, pulling it down to reveal shockingly familiar bright blue eyes.

He then extended a gloved hand, and I took it (albeit warily) with my own bare one, my eyes still transfixed on his all-too-familiar features. Something about his face bugged me, in a deja vu kind of way. I’d seen it before, I was sure of it. It may be a bit dirty now and the hair a little long, but I was sure I’d seen it.

He opened those all-too-familiar lips and curved the edges upwards in an all-too-familiar smile.

“My name’s Phil. What’s yours?”

I gaped. That’s it.

“Phil.. As in.. _Amazingphil_!?"


End file.
